


Resonance

by orphan_account



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: A flicker in the corner of your eye, A shadowy being, Episode: e033 Cassette, Teen Cecil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 04:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1969749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What had happened to Cecil as a teenager?<br/>Not even he knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resonance

The shadow watches, and the shadow waits.

 

It has done this for as long as it can remember. But remembrance is faulty. A few millennia can feel like a few minutes. In the shadow’s case, it lives forever.

 

But hosts do not live forever. That is a problem.

 

So the shadow does the only thing it knows: its job. It primarily hunts through the mirrors of humans, looking out to a world that looks at itself. Some mirrors turned up nothing; and some mirrors ended up a goldmine. This latest search was rather void of any potential. If shadows could get frustrated, this one would. The current host, although reliable in the past, gave off the aura of sickness, leaving the flicker hungry. It wouldn’t be long until he needed a replacement.

 

Another 5 minutes of searching, and the shadow finds what it is looking for. A possible replacement. Sometimes the hosts don’t make it through the ‘awakening’ stage. This subject looks to be strong enough, however.

 

The replacement is but a mere child at this point in time. His pride overshadows his flaws; his posture suggests an attempt at maturity while his mannerisms still point to those of a young teenager. A bit too happy-go-lucky for the shadow’s tastes, but you can’t win them all.

 

And then the child speaks. It’s the best voice the shadow has heard all day.

 

It’s a bit shrill, but that’s to be expected from a teen who hasn’t undergone awaking. Voices, the shadow knows, can be fixed. They can be fine tuned and rearranged and you can change pitch and frequency for the maximum efficiency, for maximum feeding capabilities. Voices are nothing but a plaything, waiting to be discovered and changed so the humans that carry them can perform their job as host as best as humanly possible.  

 

And this voice, it must taste so lovely.

 

The shadow decides to investigate further. It moves swiftly and silently, and is, for the most part, completely unseen. It travels across the floor to get a better view. The child is messing arround with a cassette tape rather foolishly. The boy just keeps talking and talking, and it’s luring out the shadow rather dangerously. It could do it right now. It could just knock out the boy and fix him up properly and kill off it’s old host, and the legacy of the voice could live on as normal.

 

_“Wait what is… that?”_

 

But now is not the time. The shadow has been spotted, which is a rather rare occurrence for itself; but when you’re lured out by a voice such as this one, it can happen. It swoops back into its hiding position, waiting for the next move to be made.

 

_“Oh, hey! Do you want to hear me sing?”_ The boy calls out, upon returning to his cassette. The being of shadow, as much as it thinks that this is the next voice, cannot stand singing. For a few seconds, it frizzles out as it scuttles back into its labyrinth of mirrors. Now is definitely not the time.

 

The cassettes are more than a good thing. To the shadow, it shows that he’s willing to become the next host. He just needs a little fixing.

* * *

 

 

The shadow has become immensely greedy.

 

It lingers around the teen much more than needed, waiting for the right  moment to strike. Granted, the window of time to attack isn’t for another week or so. But for now, it feeds. And the boy knows, too.

 

Every word is a banquet, every sentence a feast. It dances between the serenity of the syllables, spending hours on what voice it’s going to give this time. Will it be a deep voice that sounds like chocolate being poured? Maybe a sharp voice, leading others into battle? Perhaps a calm voice, slowly drifting everyone into their slumber after a long day’s work? Whatever the case, everyone for years upon years will cherish what the shadow picks, tuning in every night for a session of silk resonating against their souls.

 

The family has become a problem, and they may just hinder that from happening.

 

    The brother discourages the host-in-training from fulfilling his destiny. How dare he, rip apart such hard work and try to fight the inevitable? He will be dealt with later. The mother is a different story. She covers up the mirrors, as if the shadow has not already decided. She knows what is coming, although. It would be best to get her out of the way.

 

    Besides, the child knew his fate when he saw the flickering of the shadow for the first time.

* * *

 

 

Leonard knew exactly what was going on when the kid first stepped into the radio center.

Poor kid. The guy must of have been 15, tops. This really shouldn’t be happening to him. He was just so innocent. And such a good intern for the short amount of time he was there. The kid kept looking over his back, like he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Which was exactly what happened with Leonard around that age. It’s what happened to the radio host before that, and the radio host before that. It was a horribly screwed up tradition that resulted in memories being lost and families being torn apart; but that was Night Vale in a nutshell. Lots of things in Night Vale killed or maimed. The awakening process was actually a minimal death process in the dust bowl of a town.

 

Whatever did the job of choosing the next voice of Night Vale did its job well, Leonard thought. Cecil Palmer was a fine kid, and he would be perfect as the voice. He just had no idea what was about to happen.

* * *

 

 

The boy was beginning to show some quicks of the void.

 

They were small, usually invisible to everything but the trained eye. He stood up straighter. He begun speaking in nonsense proverbs, something that was commonplace among hosts. His consumption of coffee went through the roof, which were necessary for pulling all nighters. He was nearly ready for awakening. In turn, the teen was rubbing off of the shadow as well. A shred of empathy here, a fragment of feeling there, it was all very human and unlike the shadow. That’s what it deserves for feeding off a host. But it wasn’t enough to give mercy to the family.

 

The shadow does not kill. Killing is unprofessional, and as shadows are not physical beings, they are inadequate for cleanup. Instead, the shadow has a plan: it simply takes the soul and body into the mirror for later leftover consumption. There is no waste that way. It’s simple, effective, and there’s a free meal involved. The teen--Cecil-- the shadow enjoys that name. Cecil has picked up the fact that his family is gone. He points it out in one of his cassette recordings. The shadow has decided that it is Cecil’s last recording. He just needs to to look into his mirror one last time, and then destiny will take it’s course.

 

_“Interning is going great! Mom is gone, um… Oh! Leonard is super nice to me! My brother’s gone, too. Family, right?_

_I think I’m learning a lot at the station. All the mirrors in my house are uncovered now, and I’m not sure who did that. I’m standing in front of the hall mirror right now. Am I changed? Am I becoming an adult? I look more grown, I think. More professional.”_

 

The shadow poises itself. It’s so close, and he can taste the voice. He can feel Cecil breathe. He’s scared. They always are.

 

_“That flickering movement... is everywhere now. Especially looking in this mirror. I see the flickering movement, and I **know**. I know it.”_

 

Yes, Cecil. accept your fate.

 

_“I think the radio station is fun. I think the radio station is hidden. I think the radio station is like a dark planet lit by no sun. I think, therefore I soon won’t be._

_I’m looking in a mirror. The mirror is not covered. The flickering movement is just…behind me. I–”_

 

The shadow lunges, and makes contact with Cecil. Cecil screams on the ground, flailing futilely. The shadowy being has a well thought out plan. It begins by crawling up Cecil’s chest, and down his throat to stop the screaming. The only way to do it’s job proficiently, it seems.

 

The next few minutes are the most haunting. Every time it delves deep into the body of the next host, it’s a brand new experience compared to the last hosts. Sometimes the crawl spaces are tiny and it becomes hard to work. Other insides are expansive and open, and allow for much deeper voices. Cecil’s insides were completly average. The shadow begins with a weak anesthesia, putting whatever voice to sleep for a few minutes, which is all it needs.

 

Then the real fun begins. The shadowy figure begins with the voice box. It re-arranges fibers and muscles ever so slightly to create the most flawless sounding voice it can imagine. The shadow has thought long about this, and it works with precision and diligence to create a masterpiece of sound. Before leaving the voice alone, the shadow tests it out. The shadow cannot talk, for it is a shadow. But the unconscious host can. 

_“Cecil.”_  The shadow says to itself. It’s not quite the voice the shadow wanted, a bit too nasally to properly feed off of. It switches a few tendons before trying again. _“Cecil.”_

 

It’s a sonorous voice, deep and rich to pay attention to, but soft enough to lure sirens to their death. And it’s perfect.

 

The shadow continues its way up to the brain. This was always the riskiest part. Waking up early was an issue that almost always resulted in death or failure.

 

The shadowy figure, for the most part, wipes Cecil’s memories completely clean. The voice needs to be concentrated on his job, and past performances do not guarantee future results. Cecil also needs to be emotionally stable; who knows what the kid would do if he found his parents missing? It would break him. Hosts are meant to be fixed, not broken.

 

While in his mind, the nameless figure begins prying at his third eye. Hosts are known to be omnipotent. This is what sets him apart from the rest. It makes Cecil a child of the void, a speaker for the unknown. It intertwines him with the stars and universe alike, and in the end, it allows him to do his job better.

 

But, if the pain isn’t excruciating when it opens.Thankfully the shadow can administer an aura of numbing. Cecil had survived awakening.

 

Opening the third eye also gives Cecil a myriad of void-like traits. It gave Leonard thick, purple lips. It might give Cecil tentacles, or tattoos, or hair so white that it makes doves look dirty and stained. The shadow never can tell, even when outside the host. Eyes aren’t very well developed on a shadow.

 

When the third eye opens, it shows glimpses of time. Some of these time windows are seconds, while others are minutes of the past and future. It’s always interesting to note the futures of the hosts. Would they be well liked by the community? Would they meet an unruly end?

Cecil’s third eye showed the Shadow something different.

 

Love. Cecil’s third eye overwhelmed the shadow with pictures and thoughts of love. It practically burned at the synapses, scorching the shadow with affection. Cecil was going to wake up soon. It crawled quickly out of the boy, leaving him in a huddled, unconscious heap  on the ground. And the shadow retreated back into the mirror from once it came from, well fed and with a new host. And the shadow watched. And the shadow waited.

* * *

 

  
Cecil wakes up as a blank slate. He’s hurting, and suffering from amnesia, and he’s disorented beyond belief. Secret police have surrounded him in his home. Leonard Burton has been missing. And Cecil is next in line to be Voice of Night Vale.


End file.
